


The Freedom to Stay

by ih8tuberculosis



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-09 14:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ih8tuberculosis/pseuds/ih8tuberculosis
Summary: Arthur is given, well, forced into a second chance at life that leads him to Charlotte Balfour. Spoilers for chapter 6





	1. Chapter 1

It hadn’t been a conscious decision, but somehow he was halfway up the porch steps of Willard’s Rest. It was a very appropriate name, he thought later, lying on a comfortable mattress in the place of interest, admiring the golden glow of the morning sun on the sturdy beams of its ceiling. For months now, without fully realizing it, the home had become his safe haven. A deep peace would settle in his chest as his horse would trot up the familiar dirt path, and he would note the cliff protecting the property on two sides, the slow, clear stream protecting the third, and then her, smiling, a wave just for him, the promise of an intelligent conversation and a home cooked meal. Now, under the circumstances, he was afraid that he had overstayed his welcome. How she had dragged him up the remaining stairs and into bed, he could not imagine.

It was the buck that led him here, preposterous as it was. Arthur could not recall the events of his journey from the site of his death, but he remembered stumbling, growing cold, peaceful. Then the burning would start. A warm, golden heat would cast itself upon him, pleasant at first, but growing in intensity until it seared him. He would open his heavy eyes, and there was the buck, large eyes regarding him not with pity nor condemnation. He turned, and Arthur would follow, though the pain in his chest should have made it impossible, and the weight of his limbs should have dragged him to the ground. He had died, perhaps many times. This was clear to him through a primal instinct of some kind. The buck had brought him back over and over, only to lead him to this place where he had so often come to rest. 

When he told Charlotte, she believed him immediately. She was spiritual in that way. Like him, she was not religious, but she believed in those kinds of ideas that were beautiful in what he could only describe as a literary sense. Like himself, and Hosea, and the Dutch he once knew, she found truth in events coming full circle. He imagined it was that sort of understanding that kept her fighting after Cal died. She really loved him, like Sadie loved Jake, he thought. Mary had never loved him like that, but Mary wasn’t quite like Sadie or Charlotte, he decided.

Charlotte understood, as he then understood better than anyone, that people don’t always get what they deserve, but he worried that his recollection of the buck had convinced her that there was some sense to this life.

When she came to him the next morning, that morning as he was lying in her comfortable bed, he realized that he was angry to be alive. Just like that full circle that they talked about days later, he had been ready to die on the mountain. He had tied up his loose ends, standing up to Strauss, making peace with Sister Calderon, sending John after that family of his, and, of course, Dutch. He gave everything he had, at the end, and even though he could never right all of his wrongs, he was ready to rest. Now, he was in agony again, a burden to a person he respected. Peripherally, he knew that Charlotte had taken off his clothes and wiped phlegmy blood off of his wasted body. He knew that she was taking him to the outhouse when he could walk at all. He didn’t even have the energy to kill himself and save her the trouble. These were the times when he thought he must have died and gone to Hell. 

Mostly, he worried that Charlotte felt that she was destined to help him. As sick as he was, somewhere in the part of his mind that still worked, he feared that she would catch his disease. He was tired, so tired, of killing.

For these reasons, Arthur decided that life was nonsense. If it had any design at all, it was that of a sick joke. The buck had led him here, it was true. But he was still sick, and he would die again. 

For months, it went on like this, weakness, coughing, so much blood, not conscious enough to ask Charlotte to hand him his gun. As time stretched out uncertainly, Arthur could not understand why he hadn’t died yet. This is Hell, he thought, this is forever. At some point, he started coughing less, and less blood came out when he did. Eventually, he summoned the strength to ask. 

“Charlotte?”

She jumped, dropping the water glass that she had been holding to his lips, spilling it down his neck and making him gasp. 

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologized, gently patting him dry with the edge of her apron. “You haven’t spoken in about, let’s see, eight months.”

“Eight months?” Arthur croaked, testing his voice. “Jesus, woman, why would you… I mean, I don’t know why I’m... better all of a sudden, but you gotta let me end it.”

“End it?”

“Give me my gun. Let me do it.”

Arthur was surprised that after all this pain, upsetting a woman still hurt him more than anything.

“Mr. Morgan,” Charlotte admonished, “Well, I suppose I mustn't make you feel bad for that. You must have been in great pain for all of these months. But, please, I think I’m finally making progress. Your skin is so much brighter. And, listen.” She placed her hand on his chest, and, together, they listened to its rise and fall. She was right. Much better. He must have appeared bewildered because words of explanation tumbled out of her mouth. 

“It was the buck Arthur, you were right! The day you spoke to me about him, I saw him across the river. I followed him into the forest and he led me to a patch of strange fungus on an abandoned well. Well, I didn’t know what he wanted me to do, so he nibbled on it. And his glow got so bright that it burned me. I’ve been feeding it to you, ground up in your water. I ate some too. Look.”

Charlotte ran out to the kitchen and came back with the mold. Arthur shook his head. He liked the way that she called him Arthur. It made him feel like they were children again.

“I thought I was crazy.” He was too tired to think about the plausibility of the story. Perhaps the mold was making them insane. Maybe the water from Butcher Creek was seeping up into Charlotte’s groundwater. Either way, her face was sweetly animated as she spoke.

“I bet you been lonely with no one to talk to for eight months,” he smiled, feeling his lips crack at the now foreign expression.

“I have been talking to you,” said Charlotte. “I’ve been telling you stories. Sometimes you have nightmares, and I tell you about when I was a little girl to calm you down.” Her face was much different from the sallow, pale thing that seemed to break when skinning a rabbit for the first time. Her cheeks were dotted with freckles from time spent in the sun. Her long, dark hair was tied in a braid that rested on his chest as she leaned over him, and she wore a clean but faded cotton dress. It was blue and dotted with little white flowers. 

“Why are you doing all this for me?”

“You saved my life.”

“I barely did anything. Just taught you how to shoot.”

“It still meant my life. Now I’m saving yours. You crawled up to my doorstep. What was I supposed to do?”

Arthur laughed then, a deep, wheezing sound from an instrument that was rusty with disuse. “Darlin’ when I crawled up on your doorstep, I was about as dead as they come.”

“I like a challenge.”

“You really think that mold is helpin’ me?”

“Either that or we’re both insane.” Charlotte laughed a little at that, and the wrinkles around her eyes made Arthur smile despite himself. She really was sunny. Being around her, teaching her things, and learning things in return, always gave Arthur the exact same feeling as the time he took off his stuffy suit after that party in Saint Denis and fell asleep under the stars. 

“So how do you feel?” she asked, a bit awkwardly. Arthur realized he had been staring. He stretched his limbs skeptically. His joints groaned.

“Actually, alright.” He swung his feet to the floor. Charlotte looked on in amusement as he struggled to stand. He thought for a second about how Mary would have scolded him. Mary. Feels like someone else’s life. Charlotte caught him, hoisting his arm over her shoulder. Together, they tottered over to a full-length mirror in the corner of the room. Arthur’s momentary joy at moving substantially for the first time in nearly a year vanished when he saw himself in the mirror. He seemed like a ghost in contrast to Charlotte. She seemed to be glowing pinkish-gold, teeth white and smiling, eyes bright. He was almost gray, and his clothes were hanging on his sagging frame. The bags under his eyes were frighteningly large and purple. He looked about a thousand years older than her.

He hung his head. Ugly old man, inside and out. As if she could read his thoughts, Charlotte gave his arm a light squeeze. 

“Arthur. I know you were pretty dead. I know it was presumptuous of me to try to bring you back to life.” He lifted his head, and their eyes met in the mirror. “I did it because you’re my friend. I know you say you’re a bad man, but I like who you are, at least what I can see of it. When you left the last time, I thought I would never sit on the porch and see your horse coming up the path again.”

“Most people see me coming up their path in their nightmares.” 

“Will you try?”

“Look at me, Charlotte. I really appreciate what you’ve done for me, but...” Arthur gestured at his sunken face. Charlotte pressed her cool hand to his cheek.

“I think you’re getting a second chance, Arthur. I want to help you try.”


	2. Chapter 2

He decided to try. In the months that followed, Arthur gained his strength back little by little, fundamentally improving both his mood and Charlotte’s. In the afternoon, after Charlotte hunted for the day, they would walk along the creek. Arthur taught Charlotte about the animals that proliferated along the banks, and Charlotte taught Arthur about Shakespeare. 

Arthur liked Shakespeare, especially Macbeth. He related to something there; in Macbeth, he could see Dutch, in Lady Macbeth, Micah, a realization that hurt, but still made him chuckle. Banquo was John, or maybe Hosea, he couldn’t be sure. He, himself, had no place in the story.

Exhausted from the walk, he would lie in Charlotte’s lap and they would take turns reading out loud. Sometimes, her soft “city voice” would lull him to sleep under the hot sun, and he would miss half an act before she noticed that he was no longer paying attention. Sometimes she would read her own stories. They were meant for children, but they entertained Arthur more than he would like to admit. He never fell asleep during those. He would tell Charlotte that she should publish them. She would just stroke his light hair in a purposeful way that made his eyes flutter shut in contentment and shyly say “Maybe I will, cowboy.”

The exercise and sunshine were slowly bringing color back to Arthur’s skin, and the muscles that had eroded after a year of inactivity were beginning to grow back. Charlotte kept him well fed, forcing extra helpings on him until he would laugh and insist he couldn’t eat another bite. 

After dinner, Arthur would shuffle a pack of playing cards, and Charlotte would fix them “Old Fashioneds”, a drink that had apparently been her father’s favorite back in Chicago. Arthur told her he didn’t think much of putting “fruity shit” in bourbon, but he secretly liked the drink, and Charlotte secretly knew he did. 

The first night that they ever played cards, Arthur discovered that Charlotte would be an excellent addition to the team during one of Hosea’s old poker scams. 

They played for stories, and by nine o’clock, Arthur had told Charlotte all about the gang up until the Blackwater incident. It was the first time he had ever realized how stark that turning point had been for the gang. It brought him the same ache as the longing for someone who died. He wished he could talk to that Dutch, ask him for advice and hear the man tell Arthur he was proud just one more time. That Dutch died on the ferry in Blackwater. If Arthur had known that then, a clean break, it would have saved him a lot of hurt. But he did know, at some point.

“I should have gathered everyone and left Dutch right after Guarma.” It was the first time he had ever admitted this to himself without feeling disloyal. It was Dutch who had been disloyal. To all of them.

“Hindsight is a bitch,” Charlotte offered. This made Arthur laugh. She was always a surprise.

As the night went on, he told her about the low times. Mary, Eliza, Isaac. Thomas Downes. Micah. The hundreds of lawmen with wives and children who he had slaughtered in the name of VanderLinde. He told her about the strange times, about the friends he had met all over the country. Eventually, he ran out of energy for all of the emotions, and they fell asleep on the floor together before the fire. She rubbed comforting circles on his chest and stomach, something that they both did now out of habit, as if to feel the marvel of the normal rise and fall of his breathing.

The next morning, Arthur woke up late with a slight hangover. When he stood up, he noticed Charlotte through the window. She was kneeling in front of Cal’s grave, and he could tell by the animated movement of her head that she was talking to him. It struck him then that he wanted to master the game of poker if only to hear all of her stories. He wanted to know all about life in the city. He grinned, imagining the hell that she most definitely raised as a debutante.

Watching her through the window was like watching one of those moving pictures that they showed in a tent in Valentine, except in vivid color. Willard’s Rest. She was like a heroine. He never knew anyone could be as strong as she was without acting angry towards the whole world. Like the moose that drink from the creek, he thought, strong, smart, and gentle. 

Charlotte checked over her shoulder then, perhaps hearing the noise of an animal. He saw that her eyes were deeply sad. A heavy dose of self-disgust settled in his gut, and he averted his eyes. It wasn’t right for a mean old man like him to be living with a widow in the first place, and here he was, staring at her while she mourned her husband. Last night he had unloaded on her, burdening her with all the awful things he had done as if he didn’t deserve their weight. He had been inconsiderate of her own onus.

Suddenly, the joy he had been riding on for months as he learned to live again was replaced by that anger at surviving. He didn’t belong here, living off of a good woman. He could find John, but John had a family now and probably didn’t need some washed up old man to play at farmhand. The truth was that his life should have ended on that mountain. There was no place in the world for him now. 

Maybe he would find Sadie, if she had made it out alive. They could go on killing together, scrubbing the whole damn country of the scum standing in the way of progress.

Arthur’s satchel was gone, as were his guns, as was his sweet horse. It would have to be a long walk into Annesburg and a stolen nag. As Arthur sat down at the kitchen table to write a letter that could never say enough, Charlotte wept outside, not so much with sorrow, but with hope, as she asked Cal a question that Arthur would never know.

That night, Arthur dreamt of the day that he found Eliza and Isaac’s graves. His stomach sank as his boots echoed too loudly on the wooden floor. Somehow, this moment had played out so many times in his nightmares, but it never lost its shock value. As always, Eliza’s body lay twisted in a heap in front of their son’s smaller one. Two kids. This time, his eyes, blurred with tears, fell on more bodies. John, Abigail, Jack, and there was Tilly and Mary-Beth. Their eyes were glassy and unfeeling while his vision was blurred red with anger and pain. And then he was looking at himself. Or maybe Micah. Did it matter? The doppelganger fired a single shot. Charlotte fell to the ground, her hand falling into Eliza’s as she took her last breath. “We’re survivors, Black Lung.”

Arthur realized that he had been shouting as he woke up from the nightmare. Sweaty and shaken, he heard Charlotte rustling in the next room and silently cursed himself. 

“Arthur?” she called softly. 

“M’alright,” he answered gruffly, “Just a dream is all.” Charlotte pushed open the door and set the lantern on his bedside table. 

“Arthur,” she murmured quietly, wiping away the tears on his face with her thumb. He blushed hotly, not realizing that he had cried in his sleep. Every time she said his name he thought maybe she could read his mind through and through. She radiated, as always, energy in the form of heat and wisdom and comfort and light. She wore only her white cotton nightgown, and Arthur was sure that the brightness of the lantern revealed more of her body to him than she knew.

He wanted to hold her so badly, but he would never ask her to stay. He attempted to keep his eyes firmly on her own, but from the small smile ghosting over her lips, he felt like he may have been caught. The hardening of her nipples under the cotton confirmed that she had noted his gaze. 

“Would you like me to stay?” Arthur hesitated. She had spent nearly the last year wiping his own blood off of him. He remembered the way he looked then, and he remembered his own rules about women. Maybe she only thought she wanted him out of loneliness and the affection that comes from caring for someone weak. There was no way someone like her would want someone like him. But he knew Charlotte, and she wasn’t easily confused. If she wanted him, who was he to deny her? After all, she was wiser than him.

Maybe she was all innocence, and he was a dirty old man for reading so far into a few glances. She looked at him, now, or through him, expectantly. No, she was not all innocence. She was looking at him like she wanted to be thoroughly ravished, a word he had learned from Mary-Beth.

“Yes,” he answered, cursing the roughness of his voice, “Yes please, darlin’.”

As with every morning, Arthur awoke to the soft sun illuminating the wooden ceiling, a recurring moment that he had come to appreciate. Charlotte lay beside him, the pure sun lighting her peaceful face and freckled shoulders, and Arthur could see everything that she was as plainly as anything he had ever known. He had seen the whole country, listened to the ravings of every mad hillbilly and eccentric artist therein, made sketches of hundreds of plants and animals. He had been in love, been broken. Jesus, he had died. But there was something here at Willard’s rest that he had never seen before. 

Still, the freedom of leaving a place behind that Dutch had hammered into him tugged him to the door.

Charlotte, who had quietly awaken, laid a capable hand on his shoulder. As she always did, she seemed to sense his dilemma and solve his problem all at once.

“I’ve never felt as free and whole as when I’m here with you.”

A broad grin spread over Arthur’s face without his permission.

“Tell me, Charlotte, how long have I been in love with you?”

“I figure it was after the third time you visited me.” Arthur laughed and pulled her to his chest.

“And you love me too?”

“Yes.”

“I sure am dense sometimes.”


End file.
